The Painting of Hope
by luvtheheaven
Summary: A follow-up to ep.1x22: He didn't want the mother of the child to hate her name. "It's perfect," Elijah said in a near-whisper. Honestly, though, Elijah's opinion didn't really matter to him. Klaus looked toward Hayley. She slowly let her lips curl into a genuine smile. / Klaus took out his more delicate paintbrush, turning the edges of the splattered paint backdrop into… threads.


Klaus harshly splattered the paint onto the canvas, creating a backdrop that successfully conveyed the pain he was going through right then. There was some deep red that represented the blood and reminded him of Hayley's throat being slashed before his eyes. But there was also the orange of fire, the blackness of the heartless witches who wanted to sacrifice his child, the deep navy blue of an engulfing night… he remembered rage and extreme fear and frustration and all of the intense emotions that he'd been feeling over the past twenty-four hours or so as he began to create his newest work of art.

In the nursery, Hayley sat quietly in the rocking chair while Elijah stood, also in silence, near the crib. Neither one really had much to say. They had gone together to take their grieving public. No one knew that Hayley's tears and Elijah's stoic sadness were not due to a death but merely a physical separation, but either way the pain of "losing" this child was very real. Now they were back at home, having successfully convinced the town of their lie, and they knew Klaus had returned too, only ten or so minutes prior.

_Klaus walked in the door, and two heads immediately shot up, staring desperately in his direction._

"_Is she safe?" Hayley asked breathlessly._

"_Does our sister have her?" Elijah inquired simultaneously._

_Klaus answered them both with a meek smile. He then looked more in Hayley's direction for a moment. "Rebekah says she looks like you."_

_He noticed a single tear fall from Hayley's eye._

"_And she likes the name I chose for her," Klaus continued._

_Elijah furrowed his brow in confusion. "You… you chose a name?" he asked, surprised._

_Hayley thought back to the names she'd been considering… Zoe…Kaitlyn… Angela… she wondered what Klaus might've thought to name her._

"_I thought of the name because of you," Klaus told his brother. "You said she was our family's hope. I think she still is."_

"_Hope?" Hayley breathed._

_Klaus let himself feel nervous for a moment. He didn't want the mother of the child to hate her name._

"_It's perfect," Elijah said in a near-whisper. Honestly, though, Elijah's opinion didn't really matter to him. Klaus looked toward Hayley._

_She slowly let her lips curl into a genuine smile. "It really is," she agreed._

_Klaus smiled back. "I'm glad you don't hate it," he admitted casually, and then he left the room and headed toward where his art supplies were set up._

"_Hope," Hayley spoke aloud for the second time, this time only within earshot of the older brother. She was beginning to really like the ring of that name._

Klaus took out his more delicate paintbrush, turning the edges of the splattered paint backdrop into… threads. What looked like a chaotic abstract piece of art was now becoming… a blanket of some kind with an actual rectangular shape.

Meanwhile, Hayley stared toward the kitchen, thinking about meals. "So how often do you guys need to drink blood?" she asked her… boyfriend. Was he her boyfriend? They'd kissed a few times. She would need to figure out their relationship status sometime soon.

Elijah looked at her thoughtfully. She'd only taken a small sip of her daughter's blood. "You're still transitioning into… being a hybrid," he mused aloud, quietly. "I'm not so sure what applies for me as an Original Vampire will apply to you as…"

"…a baby hybrid?" Hayley finished for him quickly, feeling frustrated that she was having to deal with this right now. She wished she could just go back to being the werewolf she was used to being, one who only ate normal human food and enjoyed it. Drinking blood was something she didn't want to have to do… for the rest of her life! Her never-ending life, now that she realized she was immortal.

"Do you think... um…" she struggled to get her name out. "Do you think Hope will be able to live her whole life just as a… human?" She felt her voice cracking as she asked the question.

Elijah looked over at her with sympathetic eyes, seeming to try to garner up a nice answer for her.

"I mean…" Hayley continued, her voice still cracking a little as she struggled to maintain her composure, "I know she's being raised by a vampire right now, and if we… ever get her back, I know she won't be being raised by humans either. But she can avoid being turned into a vampire! She doesn't need to… cause anyone's death and trigger the werewolf gene. She can just… be." Hayley sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than actually ask Elijah his opinion.

"You're right," he assured her, just the same. He knew she might get witch genes from his mother, as those sometimes skip a generation, but it was a nice thought. That maybe his little niece might avoid all of those supernatural things that complicated lives to such an extreme degree.

Klaus was now painting the word _HOPE _onto the blanket he'd already painted. He painted each of the four letters so slowly and carefully, one might think he was doing calligraphy. But the font was simple. He used gold paint that sparkled beautifully in the light.

"I think I want to get ready for bed," Hayley told Elijah from where she sat. He nodded at her, awkwardly wondering if he should approach her and touch her in some way to give her comfort… a hug or even something smaller. But Hayley averted her eyes away from his gaze as she avoided looking at all of the baby stuff still around, and headed toward the bathroom in the house, wanting to take a shower and maybe wash away some of the blood, sweat, and tears that were lingering on her body from earlier in the day.

She walked by the room where Klaus was busy painting on her way toward the bathroom, and she noticed the word _HOPE_ on the blanket. She paused in her tracks, needing to take a moment to really look at it. Despite his super hearing, he didn't seem to notice her there. Or maybe he did, but he was just choosing to ignore her. Either way, he kept on working with his back to her. His painting looked… pretty much complete, as he seemed to be simply putting the final touches on the letter "E". And it was… beautiful. Somehow, as simple as it was… it conveyed so much emotion. The beautiful letters were sparkling despite the blanket capturing so much raw… pain. She wanted to smile and cry at the same time as she looked at it. It was such a bittersweet work of art.

"That's beautiful," Hayley commented, causing Klaus to turn around. He pursed his lips, seemingly choosing his next words very carefully. "I'm glad you saw it now, because… well, you'll see," he cryptically said in reply, turning back and concentrating again on the piece of art.

Hayley sighed and continued to walk to the bathroom, a little curious. _He could've just accepted the compliment, _she thought to herself. But she couldn't deny that he had her intrigued.

She let the water of the shower wash over her, trying to let her mind go blank and just embrace the natural power a shower usually had to relax her even when she was having a pretty bad day… but she realized that everything she felt now, even the little droplets of water hitting her skin, was… different. Heightened, she realized upon further reflection. She'd died and come back to life… of course everything had to be different now. She was basically a vampire. This wasn't a typical "pretty bad day". This had been the worst day of her life. And there was no way a shower was going to be able to relax her anyway. She grabbed the soap and proceeded to wash away the grime she felt on her body.

Klaus took a flat-shaped brush with a wide head and mixed together some white paint with some red… and a tiny bit of yellow. He wanted the perfect shade… the color baby Hope's skin had been. He closed his eyes and tried his best to remember exactly what his precious daughter had looked like.

Once he'd created the right color, he proceeded to use that same brush to… completely obscure the word he'd so diligently painted. He covered every millimeter of the gold lettering with the pinkish skin tone. He switched out the brushes when he needed to so that he could successfully outline his daughter's body. He added some shadows near where her legs were bent onto her naked abdomen. He tried to carefully capture every aspect of the newborn's beautiful form.

Elijah and Hayley went to their separate bedrooms and were unsurprisingly exhausted from the tiring day, and so they actually managed to fall asleep fairly quickly. Hayley woke up a few times throughout the night. She kept realizing all over again that her baby was no longer inside of her body… and then she would remember that her baby was no longer in New Orleans at all… and she'd ignore the other things she was feeling, the pangs of being a new hybrid and feeling the need to feed and experiencing all five of her senses in a new, heightened way. The only thing she could let herself focus on was her new, probably heightened, grief over her shattered dreams of raising her baby. She simply let her pillow catch her tears until she'd drift back into a dreamless sleep.

However, Klaus stayed up all night. He needed to capture exactly what his baby girl looked like before his memory began to fade. He painted her tiny fingers, and her little eyes in the squinted shut position, because that's how the newborn looked most of the time he'd been around her. He finished the piece just as the sun began to rise, and he left the painting displayed prominently on the canvas as he finally went to his own bed to get at least a few hours of rest.

Elijah awoke first that morning. He also ended up being the first to wander into that part of the house and… notice Klaus' portrait of the infant. He stood there, staring at it, for longer than one might've thought.

There were three adults in this family who cared deeply for the little girl. (Four, if he counted Rebekah… five if he counted Marcel who probably should be considered seeing as he did save the child's life.) He realized that even though they were living in the twenty-first century now, not one of them had thought to take a photograph of the newest member of the family. Granted, they had been a bit busy and the entire time the baby's life had been at stake, but still. Before saying goodbye to her forever, one of them could've quickly 'snapped a photo' on his or her phone. But alas, that had not happened.

So the uncle, Elijah, smiled fondly in appreciation of this token. This reminder of what the child looked like. They planned to fight so hard for this little girl, and it was nice that she didn't have to be simply a memory, but that they could also have a physical representation of her too. Elijah was also a little awed at how his brother's could've captured his daughter's appearance so well without the aid of a photograph.

Hours later, Elijah was beginning to worry about Hayley. She'd been in bed for over twelve hours. He approached her bedroom and knocked lightly on the door.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

She didn't really feel like answering that question.

"Hayley?"

"Yeah," she replied monotonously. "I'm fine." She heard Klaus' footsteps approaching.

"I doubt you're 'fine', love," Klaus said, knowingly. "But I have something for you that I think you might appreciate."

Elijah saw what Klaus was carrying. He nodded approvingly, locking into a gaze with his brother.

"Elijah thinks you'll like it too," Klaus added.

"Fine. Come in," Hayley said.

Elijah turned the doorknob for his brother as Klaus carried the large painting into the room.

"I think you should decide where we hang it," Klaus told her, before showing her the completed piece.

Hayley gasped softly. She took a moment to take in the beautiful image of the daughter she thought she might never see again. "But wait… you covered up… why did you cover up her name?"

"Because her name is a secret, isn't it? Our family's little secret," Klaus explained. "I… I figured it was important to paint it, even if I was just going to hide it, because at least I'd… _we'd_… know it was there. That behind our little baby is that…_ powerful_ little idea."

Hayley smiled. "That makes sense."


End file.
